Products

SurveyMonkey is built to handle every use case and need. Explore our product to learn how SurveyMonkey can work for you.

Get data-driven insights from a global leader in online surveys.

Explore core features and advanced tools in one powerful platform.

Build and customize online forms to collect info and payments.

Integrate with 100+ apps and plug-ins to get more done.

Purpose-built solutions for all of your market research needs.

Create better surveys and spot insights quickly with built-in AI.

Templates

Measure customer satisfaction and loyalty for your business.

Learn what makes customers happy and turn them into advocates.

Get actionable insights to improve the user experience.

Collect contact information from prospects, invitees, and more.

Easily collect and track RSVPs for your next event.

Find out what attendees want so that you can improve your next event.

Uncover insights to boost engagement and drive better results.

Get feedback from your attendees so you can run better meetings.

Use peer feedback to help improve employee performance.

Create better courses and improve teaching methods.

Learn how students rate the course material and its presentation.

Find out what your customers think about your new product ideas.

Resources

Best practices for using surveys and survey data

Our blog about surveys, tips for business, and more.

Tutorials and how to guides for using SurveyMonkey.

How top brands drive growth with SurveyMonkey.

Contact SalesLog in
Contact SalesLog in
Survey Science

Will the new Star Rating question type affect your survey completion rates?

Will the new Star Rating question type affect your survey completion rates?

Ever tire of asking your customers how satisfied they are using a regular old numerical satisfaction scale? No worries. You can now use stars, smiley faces, hearts and thumbs up or down with our brand new Star Rating question type!

And because we’re your resident survey scientists here at SurveyMonkey, we always test our features out before we recommend them to all of you.

So let’s jump right in to testing Star Rating, shall we?

We asked 12 questions using a satisfaction scale with five response options (Very satisfied, Somewhat satisfied, Neither satisfied nor dissatisfied, Somewhat dissatisfied, Very dissatisfied). In addition to these, we asked the same questions using stars, smiley faces, hearts and thumbs.

Screenshot of response options without words

We also tested adding the verbal labels to the scales as seen in the screenshot below. Then we randomly assigned the respondents to one of the nine question types from earlier and tested to see whether their answers changed, based on the type of questions presented.

Screenshot of questions with icons and labels

In the chart seen below, we’re showing the mean score for each of the 12 questions we asked by the question type. There are nine mean scores, one for each question type.

Mean scores by question type

The blue line is for the regular satisfaction scale. The other eight lines are for the star, smiley face, heart, and thumb scales. For each question, the mean scores for the nine question types are very similar to each other, suggesting that the answers we received didn’t change based on the type of questions we used.

We did the same analysis for people who took our survey on mobile and on PCs separately. The same conclusion was reached on both occasions. Also, answers among the different questions were very similar regardless of the question type.

For the most part, survey completion rates were above 90% and they also didn’t change by question type. Meaning? Respondents are definitely not less likely to answer new question types than they are older, more traditional radio button rating scales.

Based off of our experiments, it’s safe to say using the Star Rating question type won’t hurt your survey completion rates and they won’t change your results either. We also think your survey takers will love the new design of the Star Rating icons. Expect tons of smiley faces in your next survey!

Want to see how you can make the star rating question work for you? Try it out yourself.